The Night of the Purification of Wizarding Britain
by half fare prince
Summary: Britain's not what Harry thought-or the Wizarding League thinks. He and his friends aren't the figureheads they wish they were. And if they can't uncover what's going on tonight they'll see the purification of Wizarding Britain tomorrow morning. Revised in anticipation of next chapter.


This isn't epilogue compliant, and it's AU when it's convenient. Voldemort died, and Harry lived, and after that things are hazy and different. Thanks for reading.

PROLOGUE: THE THINGS HARRY HADN'T QUITE HEARD

When it happened, Harry's ears were still popping from the aeroplane. Otherwise he'd have heard. He and the honorary British delegation had landed in Muggle Bern hours earlier and been whisked by silent cars with opaque windscreens through the center of he city and into a wizarding enclave, and they'd done all the arrival things since then-they'd lugged their trunks up to their rooms, had famous things pointed at by well-meaning hosts, washed up and dressed for the dinner. But Harry had never flown the Muggle way before, and he was still groggy from the flight. In the moment before everything happened he admitted it to Hermione, told her he still felt completely underwater.

She'd said she had a pill for that, somewhere in her ridiculous handbag, but then everything had gotten very loud.

#

It had taken a while to break Harry's resolve. It had taken a while, and three regal, angry-looking owls attached to gruff letters from Kingsley, and five extemporaneous lectures from Hermione on the Wizarding League's place in the history and stability of Wizarding Europe (in the wake of the final, deadliest Goblin Rebellion, of course.) It had taken all that before Harry agreed to spend a week back in his old solemn life as part of the honorary delegation. Neville and Dean had told him it would be like a vacation, a wild vacation, attached to a few boring speeches, and that he was taking it too seriously. Hermione had told him how seriously he would be taken.

It had only been a year since Hogwarts had fallen down around him, but Harry'd tried to explain to Kingsley, by way of the legs of the regal owls, that it already felt much longer. He tried to tell Hermione that there was really no offseason as such for seekers in Quidditch's first division. He tried to tell Ernie Macmillan that he had no real use for politics, no matter how much weight his name might carry. Finally, though, he'd given the nonplussed Ministry owl a curt note, and he'd steeled himself for Hermione's extemporaneous hug, and he'd allowed Ernie the smug self-satisfaction of believing he'd convinced the Wizard Who Won to get into politics.

#

Harry had never seen anything like the Wizarding League's reception hall. It was severe and Scandinavian-looking on the outside-the International Style, Hermione had called it-and the ceiling high over Harry's head stood in perfect opposition to Hogwarts's dusky charmed sky, a white rectangle that raced toward a vanishing point just over the big windows that made up the far wall and showed the tops of a copse of trees and the Swiss hills in the distance. "It feels-cold in here," Harry said.

"In this part of Europe, for this kind of building, ornamentation is an unforgivable curse, magic or no magic." Hermione bit her lower lip down into a little frown. "They won't say it to our face, but Wizarding Europe finds out magical community hopelessly provincial."

"I reckon that's their problem, and not ours."

Hermione gave a nearly imperceptible mm-hmm and waved her ridiculous handbag at him. Her face changed, as though she remembered they weren't gossiping alone but in a room filled with a hundred dignitaries. "If we're going to play dress-up," she said, sounding a little nervous,  
>"I suppose we should at least act the part of mature, boring diplomats, right? After you."<p>

She was wearing a sleek, glittering dress, which she fussed with, every so often, in anxious, un-ladylike ways. "You look-fine, natural," Harry said, again. "I'm the one in rented Muggle eveningwear."

"I feel as if I'm playing House. United Nations House, I mean. I look-thank you, Harry-with this ridiculous handbag, and-" reaching her free hand up around her shoulders she took a final inventory of the dress's straps. "Maybe if I filled it _out _like an adult. Merlin."

"Who knew it would be so easy to miss dress robes, right?" Dean popped up from nowhere behind them, looking like he'd been born in tails. "You two shouldn't be having nearly so much trouble as Ernie, and he's already mastered the bow-tie."

"I have, thank you," Ernie said, looking as though he imagined he looked like he'd been born in tails. "Only had to watch Dean do it once."

"It's just odd," Harry said. "Like I'm in a room full of Muggles with magic wands."

"I'm fond of it, personally," Ernie sniffed. "Wizarding Europe proves that we needn't be beholden to _tradition_ to be real wizards. Pureblood, Muggle-born-they hardly know the terms. Now I believe the dinner is about to begin."

He gave a stiff bow and walked in measured strides to their table, where Kingsley and Neville were making small talk. When he was out of earshot Dean turned back to Harry and Hermione. "I can't wait to see him use that line on the French delegation."

"And the Spanish delegation," Harry said. "And the German delegation, and the Bulgarian delegation..."

#

There was a speech by the General Secretary that Harry got through only by hyperfocusing on a vain attempt to keep his posture as ram-rod straight as Ernie's, and then a dinner he managed only by focusing on the courses he could recognize. Then, just as he was about to ask her if she didn't feel like getting some air, too, there was Ernie asking Hermione what she thought of the speech.

"These people," Ernie said, "they're remarkable. Nearly all of them pureblood and you wouldn't even know it."

Hermione looked thoughtful for a moment. "It all sounded very fine."

"Gram doesn't trust them," Neville said.

"She'll have to," Kingsley said. "If we can't convince the rest of the League that the Death Eaters and their ilk are a problem-that the reconstruction of Wizarding Britain must be a priority-your grandmother won't have many trustworthy Britons left to gossip with."

From across the table Blaise Zabini sneered.

Neville's hand closed tight around his glass. "Excuse me?"

Harry let his wand-hand slip beneath the tabletop. "Please, Zabini, finish your thought."

Everyone fell silent. A few beats passed and Harry felt, in the quiet, as though the rest of the delegations had begun inching their tables closer to Britain's and tut-tutting in the International Style.

Hermione put her own hands on the table and attempted, perfunctorily, to clear her throat. "Harry, please-Blaise, if you're going to say something, please just _say _it. You're a member of the delegation."

"I'm just-not surprised to see that the Minister's reliance on scare tactics and bogeymen has crossed national boundaries."

"Finally," Dean said. "Money talks." Kingsley sighed.

Forks scratched tensely over fine china a few minutes longer. Harry had begun testing his posture again when the party finally broke up, and he followed Hermione gratefully out to the balcony, beyond the wide windows at the far wall.

"I felt like I was cooking in there," Hermione said, when they got outside. It was dark on the balcony save for three massive columns, which rose thirty feet into the night to meet the roof and glowed a pristine white by some indeterminate combination of moonlight and enchantments. There were stars out like Harry hadn't seen in six months of hazy London evenings, after practices and during matches, and it was just cold enough that he felt the heat rising up from under his stiff collar and radiating off his cheeks.

"Whatever the conference's findings on Muggleborn reconciliation are, I think they'd better enact them quickly, before Dean murders Zabini."

"Right."

Harry'd been trying for something light but Hermione turned away, out toward the evergreens that just reached up to brush against the balcony. He was beginning to think she'd gotten more anxious, somehow, in the months they'd been apart; he realized she'd stopped holding eye contact. "Did I-"

"You don't hate me for bugging you about coming-"

"No, of course not. I might hate Kingsley for bugging Blaise about coming, but it's worth leaving London on occasion for a view like this. And I haven't had a real day off all of it since I signed, if you want to know the truth."

"Good."

They turned away from the luminous columns toward the party inside. "Can't say much for all this, though. This feels like the wrong path, somehow, not that I know what the right path would be."

"I'm not a eurosceptic, exactly, but-you're right, I think. I don't like seeing Kingsley like this. He's acting powerless, whether he's powerless or not."

"Budget deficits on one side and these-these people on the other," Harry said. "I guess I never thought about us-compared with everyone else, like this."

"We're different all over again."

"Exactly. I'd just gotten used to all the tension-to the purebloods and half-bloods and the, the _mud_bloods. Now Ernie's happy to tell me that that's all Britain-that everywhere else they solved the problems we spent our whole lives fighting for over tea at one of these things."

"Harry, don't-"

It was as though she could see him thinking about Remus, and Sirius, and Fred, and he exhaled before he went on. "It was worth it, Hermione, you've told me enough times by now. It's not that. But what's _Britain _worth if that's what it cost to get some backwater out of the dark ages? Part of me wishes I were Zabini, that none of this mattered anyway compared to galleons and ancestry."

Hermione took two halting steps forward and patted him lightly on the shoulder. When the words came they did all at once-"I can assure you that-that no part of anybody else at that table wishes you were Zabini." They stood there. Then she smiled, and then she giggled, and before Harry could turn on her she said, "Ernie might be right about your future in politics, you know." Harry tried to shrug off her hand and turned around, his eyes wide. "It was a lovely speech! Honestly, I know. But it was."

Harry pantomimed a noose tightening around his neck. "You're going to make me resign right over the edge of this balcony, Hermione."

From the door to the balcony, backlit by a more raucous party than Harry remembered leaving, Neville began clapping slowly. "It really was, Harry."

Harry turned as if summoned. "Oh-you too?"

"Swore up'n'down I'd keep an eye on you," Neville said in a half-yell, sounding suddenly very drunk. "Up'n down'I did. 'Swhat I'm doing."

Hermione took her hand from Harry's shoulder and, with her eyes down, said, "_Honestly,_ Neville-I don't know what you're-" much too quietly for Neville to hear.

Neville went on, completely unfazed. "She's worried about"-and here he made a wildly exaggerated hourglass shape with his hands-"up on the mountains and on-in town, you know. _Alpine vixens_, she called 'em. 'Scontinental women for you, she said. Anyway, Ernie's looking f'two of you. Wants to show you off to Am-m-bassador Durand. Char-r-ming fellow, the ambassador."

"Thank you, Neville!" Harry yelled after him.

Hermione had composed herself during Neville's evocative gesturing. "Well-we mustn't keep the ambassador waiting."

"Neville clearly didn't wait, if that's any consolation." They both laughed and then it was quiet again.

"You don't mind that I and the Weasleys are-"

Hermione shook her head until he stopped talking. "They're your family, Harry, of course not. And Gin. I'd be terrible if I did."

"Good. When everything happened I didn't want to-"

"I wouldn't make you choose, Harry. Not that I could, but I-I wouldn't make you."

They didn't talk for a while.

"I'm cold," Hermione said.

"Sure," Harry said. "Yeah. Let's go in and see what Ernie's amazed about now."

From the moment they had arrived there'd been something not right about everything Harry had seen. But he couldn't piece it together. He couldn't begin to articulate it to Neville or Hermione, let alone Kingsley; his head was still swimming from the flight. So all he said to Hermione when she asked if he was okay was: "To be honest, you still sound completely underwater to me. The Quidditch tabloids would ruin me if they knew about this, I imagine. 'The Boy Who Lived With Sensitive Ears.'"

"You can count on my discretion, of course," Hermione said, tipping an invisible fedora.

Ernie had found them immediately, looking more tipsy than drunk. He turned to Harry and he said, one hand reaching absently for the ambassador's lapel, "For a _hero_-of course it was a local matter, pr'marily, born of reg-g-gional prejdis-for a _hero_ he's really quite modest, Harry P-Potter. And Herm-mynee, here."

"You see, Hermione? Why, even Ernie here sounds completely underwater to me."

"Oh-I have a pill for that!" Against Harry's protestations she began digging around in her ridiculous handbag. "It's-I _always_ used to get that, and I'd cry and sulk the first night of all our holidays. Not that you're sulking, I mean-"

Harry grinned at Hermione, watched her simultaneously overreact and realize she was overreacting like she always did. Then it got very loud, and all at once the small noises the professional seeker should have caught, the little shifts in mood and tone that should have set him on edge, fell into place behind the present moment.

Someone was coming in over the lovely balcony.

Someone was crashing through the severe doors.

The Death Eaters appeared at either end of the party, and as tables crashed to the ground and screams echoed in the sterile white room Harry knew what was wrong. Kingsley had vanished, the ambassador was calling out to his countrymen in frantic French, and in the moment before Harry thought he might finally understand what was happening Ernie Macmillan and Neville Longbottom fell dead beside him.


End file.
